Week 11: Contrast Exercise (Visual Communication)

Sad to say, one of the challenges that designers face is that people really do judge books by their covers. Which could explain a lot. So for this week's assignment, I'll focus on book covers again, this time looking at their color pallets.

Good Example: Hans Christian Andersen
Right here, we have a decent contrast of colors. The yellow border creates a pleasing contrast that leans towards Leveling, being one of the Primaries that contributes to the green inside. The difference in Tone emphasizes the difference, but the low saturation prevents the contrast from becoming garish. The red bar in the upper half provides a greater contrast, as Red and Green are diametrically opposed hues. This causes the subtitle The Complete Fairytales and Stories to pop out at the viewer while its darker tone mutes the effect enough that the contrast, again, remains acceptable.








Bad Example: A Glossary of Literary Terms

This book, however, is a different story. The initial intention was (apparently) to use the contrast between Yellow and Purple hues to make the text on the cover pop out. Unfortunately, the purple's saturation made the contrast far too great. The dull, less-saturated yellow was likely intended to mute the contrast and cause the letters to pop out; instead the texts' color juxtaposition are almost entirely disappears against the purple. The contrast in tone between the lighter text is also too great, making the sharpness feel almost painful. Even the design in the background, which is almost identical in tone, hue and saturation, still feels jarring.

Contrast aside, the purple color, by any design standards, seems to be a very dangerous one to design with, since there's no way of using it tastefully. Furthermore, the scheme feels gaudy and completely inappropriate for a reference text.